me order of the whole. Besides the uncounted cherubs which
float among the rays of glory or support the cloudy thrones of the
saints and prophets, there are between seventy and eighty figures in
the picture; yet the hosts of heaven and the church on earth seem
gathered about the altar with its sacred wafer--the tiny circle which is
the focus of the great composition and the inevitable goal of all
regards, as it is the central mystery of Catholic dogma.

[Illustration: Plate 13.--Raphael. The "Disputa."
In the Vatican.]

Opposite, in the "School of Athens" (Pl. 14), the treatment is different
but equally successful. The hieratic majesty of the "Disputa" was here
unnecessary, but a tranquil and spacious dignity was to be attained, and
it is attained through the use of vertical and horizontal lines--the
lines of stability and repose, while the bounding curve is echoed again
and again in the diminishing arches of the imagined vaulting. The
figures, fewer in number than in the "Disputa" and confined to the lower
half of the composition, are ranged in two long lines across the
picture; but the nearer line is broken in the centre and the two
figures on the steps, serving as connecting-links between the two ranks,
give to the whole something of that semicircular grouping so noticeable
in the companion picture. The bas-reliefs upon the architecture and the
great statues of Apollo and Minerva above them draw the eye upward at
the sides, and this movement is intensified by the arrangement of the
lateral groups of figures. By these means the counter curve to the arch
above, the one fixed necessity, apparently, of the lunette, is
established. It is more evident in the perspective curve of the painted
dome. Cover this line with a bit of paper, or substitute for it a
straight lintel like that seen beyond, and you will be surprised to find
how much of the beauty of the picture has disappeared. The grouping of
the figures themselves, the way they are played about into clumps or
separated to give greater importance, by isolation, to a particular
head, is even more beyond praise than in the "Disputa." The whole design
has but one fault, and that is an afterthought. In the cartoon the
disproportioned bulk of Heraclitus, thrust into the foreground and
writing in an impossible attitude on a desk in impossible perspective,
is not to be found. It is such a blot upon the picture that one cannot
believe that Raphael added it of his own motion;